Two additional women have joined a lawsuit against the Free Press alleging pay discrimination.

In October four female journalists — Kathleen Galligan, Mary Schroeder, Rose Ann McKean, and Regina H. Boone — filed suit against the newspaper in federal court, alleging the newspaper has underpaid them for years because they are women. The suit charged that men in the company are paid more than women in almost every employee category of the newsroom.

On Wednesday veteran labor and civil rights attorney Deborah Gordon amended the complaint to add the names of breaking news reporter Ann Zaniewski and food writer Susan Mickels, who writes under the name Susan Selasky.

"I think in cases where there is a group — multiple plaintiffs — potential plaintiffs see what's happening, can digest the situation, give it thought and then it's not unusual for there to be additional plaintiffs," said Gordon. She noted that while the original plaintiffs were all photojournalists the two new plaintiffs represent a more diverse sector of the newsroom.

"It tells me what I had learned earlier, which was that the pay discrepancies do not seem to be in only one area of the paper," said Gordon. "I am not really surprised that there are some additional plaintiffs from other parts of the paper."

Free Press Editor Peter Bhatia on Thursday reiterated the company's stance from October: "As we said previously, the Free Press is committed to opportunity for all its employees. There is no merit to the lawsuit.”

The lawsuit is based on a study by the newspaper union that analyzed payroll data for male and female employees at the Free Press and claimed significant salary disparities between genders. The union study was published in the spring of 2017 and relied on salary figures from 2013-15.

In October Gordon said the Free Press and its parent company, Gannett, which is also named as a defendant, have been aware of the data and knew that the union was looking into gender pay issues for more than a year.

The lawsuit was filed under the Equal Pay Act, a 1963 federal employment law that requires that men and women in the same workplace be given equal pay for equal work. It also alleges violations of the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, a state law that prohibits sex discrimination in the workplace.

The lawsuit is seeking unspecified punitive damages and corrective action that would raise salary levels for women so that they make what their similarly situated male counterparts do. The lawsuit also seeks to restore the wages that the plaintiffs allege they were cheated out of during the three years covered by the study.